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Broodlord Lashlayer guards the Halls of Strife, blocking the way into Nefarian's inner sanctum.

Broodlord Lashlayer is another boss in a long line of interesting and dynamic boss fights. Though more straight forward than Razorgore and less touchy than Vael, Broodlord is still a very chaotic and engaging encounter. Though the actual fight with the Broodlord can and should be relatively free of adds, the entire encounter begins long before you ever lay eyes on him.

The first room contains two groups of dragonkin, which we call a Death Talon Pack. Once the Death Talon Packs have been cleared, your path leads up some stairs and to a pair of interconnected Suppression Rooms.

Much of the challenge in the Broodlord encounter is embodied by the two mob-infested "suppression" rooms that must be traversed before the fight actually begins. Each room is littered with suppression traps, which must be disarmed by rogues. Guarding the traps are a colorful galaxy of non-elite dragon whelps that must be AoE'd down by Mages and Warlocks, which respawn after 30 seconds. Both rooms also have their own sets of patrolling elite humanoids and Death Talon Hatchers, which respawn on a 20 minute timer. When the suppression traps are up, they radiate an aura that reduces movement speed, attack speed, and casting speed, to 20%.

Rogues in this portion of the encounter should be doing nothing but disarming traps. Their job is to remain in stealth and move around disarming traps so that the raid can pass through unhindered. Distract should be used as much as possible to prevent the mobs from detecting the rogues' stealth. Disarmed traps pop back up after what seems to be a random amount of time. If this is the case with a trap that the raid is near, it must be guarded and disarmed again until it is safe to leave. Please note also that from the moment a trap pops back up, it takes a second until it may be disarmed again. This process takes just long enough that the trap can release a suppression aura before it is disarmed.

Also important is keeping mages and warlocks alive to keep the dragon whelps under control. Hunters will be the main source of DPS against elites as caster mana must focused on killing whelps. Mages should have Mage Armor active to allow some regeneration of mana during their AoEs, and should drop to wandshots when their mana is low. It is also a good idea to make sure mages have different types of wand damage as each color whelp is resistant to different types of magic.

The first suppression room is naturally the easiest, as elites can be pulled out of the suppression traps and effectively tanked in a spot that isn't being hit with periodic suppression auras. Packs should be pulled so that there is only one dragonkin left. At this point, the raid must move itself to the far southwest corner of the room, with everyone positioned so that only the nearby pack of whelps aggroes when they respawn. The time between respawns is when mages and healers can stop to regen their mana/health as well as res any fallen players who would otherwise simply be left behind.

After the last dragonkin is pulled and killed, the raid moves into the hallway that connects the two suppression rooms. From this spot, the raid must destroy more groups of elites until it is safe to move into the southeast corner of the final suppression room. From here, the remaining elites are cleared and the raid moves into one of the cubby holes to prepare to pull Broodlord. Casters should drink whenever possible and healers should attempt to resurrect anyone that dies whenever they have time.

The encounter with Broodlord, like all encounters in the instance, seems to have several ways it can be accomplished. Positioning is key, as is how fast your groups elects to dish out the punishment. Broodlord has four main attacks that you are going to need to deal with. Where your party decides to tank him and where your "camp" is positioned is very important due to his abilities and due to the rigors of the environment (unavoidable suppression traps and repopping dragonlings.)

He does a Blastwave / AoE Knockback similar to the Scholomance Handlers (in the undead dragonkin room). It is fire based and does quite a hefty amount of damage.

Like most nasty bosses, he has a cleave that your cloth wearers are going to want to avoid. While not as nasty as Vael's, it's still pretty nasty.

Possibly the most problematic attack that Broodlord has is an ungodly Mortal Strike that he will do frequently on your Main Tank. This can crit for up to 8000 damage on plate and 15000+ on cloth. It also leaves the MS debuff that reduces healing, which is Not Good. It is recommended that priests power word shield the tank when he applies the MS debuff.

The trickiest part of Broodlord is a single target knockback that he will do on whomever is highest on his threat list. After he knocks a target back, that target's aggro is reduced by 50%. Over the course of this fight, he will do this repeatedly on all of your tanks. The challenge of this fight is then killing him before your cloth's aggro crests over your tank's aggro and he cannot be brought back under control but not doing so much damage that he loses tank aggro early. There are several different strats dealing with this including the "Wand Method" which is doing as little damage as possible over time but before he aggros on healers, the "DPS Method" in which he is Nuked into oblivion before aggro ever becomes a problem and the "Wave Method" where DPS is modulated every time he switches aggro to a new tank. Since 1.9.3 it is no longer possible to have an OOC resser so suiciding DPS and healers is no longer an option.

In this fight, aggro management and DPS modulation is everything. Aggro reducing talents for Mages, Priests and Warlocks (down the demonology tree) make a huge difference and should be considered if the raid is having problems. Ruin and other crit talents for classes like Warlocks who have poor aggro management should be considered carefully as spiked burst damage is detrimental in this encounter. Warlocks who refuse to drop Ruin can be made to DoT or Wand for this encounter to help normalize their damage. Rogues and Hunters should be using their aggro reducing talents and using Vanish or Feign Death at every available opportunity.

This fight almost requires tanking warriors (of which you should have several) to have plenty of defense and AC. Though the raid may not be big on consumables, Flasks of the Titans and potions that increase AC and Health are a huge help in this fight as Broodlord's Mortal Strike can and will one-shot a tank with less than 8,000 health if it crits (it is rumored that a mob's special abilities can't crit as of Patch 1.8). An unfortunate MS and Blastwave in quick succession spells almost certain doom for tanks with low AC, Defense and Health.

All healing should be eyes-forward and focused on the tanks. Rogues should be prepared, if needed, to step back and bandage. Timing it so the Main Tank gets a Power Word: Shield immediately after being hit with Mortal Strike is also a huge help in mitigating the amount of burst damage and the subsequent debuff.

Curse of Recklessness on the Broodlord is dangerous, since some data below indicates that mobs do not use the same attack power formula. Similarly, effects that reduce the Broodlord's attack power can be very beneficial (Demoralizing Shout and Screech).